It’s nae your duty I want more of.
And all the while, Searrach had been awaiting his return.
Iris finished her notes and threw the quill to the floor in a fit of pique. She shoved the packet from her lap to the cot and gained her feet to pace the small chamber, as if she could escape her maddening thoughts.
Why did she care that he flattered her but slept with Searrach? He was obviously only playing with her. Practicing with her. Isn’t that what Lucan wanted her for, any matter? To teach Padraig Boyd how to behave as a noble?
And wasn’t that what noblemen did? Heap praise and petty flattery on those worthy of their station, while behind closed doors they sated their baser and terrible desires with women other than their wives?
Padraig Boyd is neither Adolphus Paget nor Vaughn Hargrave, she told herself.
No, but he is the son of Thomas Annesley.
Iris stopped in the middle of the chamber.
What had Father Kettering meant in the corridor? Why had he stolen Padraig’s brooch with such antagonism? The priest had been nothing but mild mannered since Iris’s arrival.
What if Lucan was wrong, though? Not only about Padraig Boyd but Thomas Annesley too?
Iris went back to her stack of papers, riffling through the bottom half until she found the information she sought. Euphemia Hargrave had disappeared from Darlyrede House the same year Lucan’s and her parents had perished in the fire at Castle Dare. It had been Lucan’s boyhood theory that if Thomas Annesley hadn’t died in Scotland all those years ago, as everyone thought, he had returned to Northumberland to take unfounded revenge on the Montagues, wedding guests at Darlyrede House the night Cordelia Hargrave had died. Lucan had vowed to track down Thomas Annesley and find out the truth.
What if Thomas Annesley was guilty and had passed down his terrible traits to Padraig Boyd? Perhaps Lucan had dedicated his life to handing back the domain of a monster to his spawn.
Then she remembered Padraig’s face on the night of his arrival at Darlyrede, remembered his tender assistance in picking her up from the floor, remembered his pride at excelling at his lessons, the clear love in his voice when he’d spoken of beautiful, wild Caedmaray. Surely after so many months in the very lair of Vaughn Hargrave, Iris could recognize evil when it was so close to her night and day.
Iris grew still for a moment, a tickle in her mind, a spreading irritation that an instant later had her riffling back through the pages from her portfolio. Her eyes scanned the notes, her fingers flipped through the sheets; she looked back and forth between the two pages and then raised her unseeing gaze.
Cordelia Hargrave had only been sixteen years old when she’d been murdered.
Almost exactly the same age Euphemia had been when she’d disappeared from Darlyrede House—ten and five.
He hasn’t touched you, has he? I don’t like it when he touches my girls…
Iris shuffled back through the pages to the list of known persons who had disappeared from Darlyrede and the surrounding villages. She traced the line of names with her forefinger, men and women. There was no pattern for the masculine names, but for the women…yes, some were older and hailed from other towns, but—
“Ten and six,” Iris whispered to herself, her gaze following her finger down the list. “Maid, ten and six; maid, ten and six; dairy, ten and five; kitchen, ten and six; maid, ten and four. All missing in winter. All from Darlyrede House.”
Fourteen of them. One for each year Euphemia had been gone, save one.
* * * *
Padraig crossed his arms over his chest and regarded the raven-haired woman swaying before him, a sly smile on her face. Her forefinger twirled the velvet of his tunic. “Why are your clothes off? And how do you keep getting in here?”
“That’s a lot of questions from a man standing before a naked woman,” she teased, her stroking forefinger giving way to smoothing both palms up Padraig’s biceps. “We can talk later. I need you.” Her hands came around the back of his neck, pulling his head down.
Padraig shook her off and crossed the room, where he picked up her discarded gown from the back of a chair. “Get out.” He tossed the gown at her, but it only landed in a pile at her feet.
She put her hands on her hips and gave him a rueful smile. “Are ye fashed your precious Beryl saw me?”
“Cletus is dead,” Padraig said bluntly. “Sir Lucan will be joining me in a moment, so nae matter what task Hargrave has set you to, I suggest you get yer things on an’ go.”
“Cletus is dead?” she repeated.
He turned to the decanter on the table and poured himself a drink without answering her. But as he raised the cup to his lips, he paused. Someone had just tried to poison him in a hall full of guests; could he truly trust that the drink set in his chamber for his own consumption was safe? Goddammit. He hurled the cup and its contents into the hearth.
Searrach was still standing in the middle of the floor, her eyes wide. She hadn’t flinched at his temper.
“Is the wine bad?”
“Aye. Nay.” Padraig turned away, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I doona know.”
He didn’t hear her bare footfalls, but a moment later Searrach’s arms slid around his middle from behind. He felt her lay her face against the middle of his back.
Padraig sighed and opened his mouth to command her once more to leave, but stopped as he noticed the faint scars around Searrach’s wrists. Thin, faded pink over white. As if she’d been repeatedly bound.
Beryl had said the woman had been attacked before coming to Darlyrede months ago, but the markings looked recent.
Very recent.
“Searrach,” he asked in a quiet voice. “How did you get the scars on your wrists?”
She
